


Echoing Against Bereavement

by Royswordsman (RoySwordsman)



Category: Avengers (Comics), Captain America, Captain America (Comics), Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Comic), Iron Man (Movies), Iron Man - All Media Types
Genre: Civil War (Marvel), M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-02-19
Updated: 2013-02-18
Packaged: 2017-11-29 19:32:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/690627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoySwordsman/pseuds/Royswordsman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Civil War Tony Stark finds it hard to cope with the death of his life long partner, parting on such harsh circumstances has began to lead him to find ways to cope with his grief, without reaching for solace at the bottom of a bottle. With technology and its increasing potential, maybe there is a far easier way to deal with the grief.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Echoing Against Bereavement

Tony Stark was sat alone in his lab, a cold glass sat in his hand with crystal drops of condensation trickling down the sides. Each drop cascading, gliding over his thumb that held onto the glass ever so tightly. Dark brown liquid swirled in the see-through prison that it was held in with the fragrant fruity smell of scotch dancing around the room from the moment that he had lifted the cork from the bottle.

Steve had died, short through the heart by Crossbones, even though the mad had admitted that it wasn’t his master plan. And yet, Tony could only see himself pulling the trigger, in fact, he could feel it. His index finger twitched and curled ever so slightly as an overwhelming sense of guilt washed over him; it was the most prominent feeling, as though he were drowning, suffocating. However there was also one other emotion that was slowly reaching up from the dark abyss, dark hands of loneliness grappling at his heart, tugging at his veins causing his heart to ache.

Tony hated to be alone. An agonising desolation, a barren feeling was creeping into his mind ever since the start of the war.

His dark, clouded blue eyes drifted upon his desk, meeting the corners of a sculpted beauty; a fine mahogany wooden frame amongst the rest of the metallic objects that sat on his desk, which certainly looked out of place with the rest of the decor. A photograph was smugly within it, and it was a photograph of the old Avengers, the team, the family, amongst the broken glass of the frame. However, it was just broken around Captain America and Iron man’s face.  The two stood next to one another with such a strong stance and with smiles over their faces. Although he couldn’t see it in that very photo, Tony remembered how he was beaming under that golden mask as he stood side by side, right against the guy from the comics he had read as a child, the man he was jealous of and yet secretly called his hero. And he had let that go. Now Steve was gone and he could never stand like that again, constantly wishing to himself that Steve had seen the same sense as he did, and stood with him, not against him. The key word being wished, knowing that after so long, wishes were nothing which became particularly apparent after all of… This.

Now it was too late, and he had just returned from returning Steve’s body to the ice from whence it came. Grief stricken, self-comforting was the only way that he knew how to cope with such a thing. But the instant he raised the glass to his lips, he found himself throwing it hard against the wall until it shattered with a loud smash, with sparkling fragments flying upon the area of impact, catching the beams of light that managed to breach the blinds that hid him from the world. He wasn’t about to relapse, as tempted as he was. Steve wouldn’t have wanted that, but then again, Steve wouldn’t have wanted to die either, or conform to the ‘Registration Act’, but now he had no say in the matter. Either way, not drinking was something for himself, and not anyone else, with the main objective of distancing himself from his father as much as he possibly could.

With a heavy huff Tony turned around in his black leather chair, a torn American flag sat in his lap from the streets of New York. Just another casualty of war.

He found himself puling his tablet toward him, tapping it without a particular agenda in mind, until eventually he stumbled across a search engine, and before he knew it, he had typed ‘how to deal with losing a lover.’ Yes, he had lost many people in the past, including lovers; Rumiko, Heather, Kathy, the list seemed endless as he looked back at it. But although he had suffered when he had lost them, plummeting into drinking, particularly after his heartache after each one slowly vanished from his life, tearing out a part of him, nothing was like this, even being shot in the spine hurt less than this.  Steve was more to him than anyone else ever was, in fact, Steve was his everything. And for the longest of times, before the war, they were together in secret. Tony was the happiest he had ever been, all before Stamford had come along and triggered everything off so violently, abruptly pulling Tony out of his safe haven with Captain America. The tragic events resulted in the two splitting, in fact, never ever discussing it, nor getting the chance or plucking up the courage to do so.  Tony just woke up one morning and Steve was gone without a word. He wasn’t in his bed net to him, comforting him, supporting him, which is only what Tony had dreamed of. His safe sanctuary in the arms of the super soldier was shattered and now the man was standing alongside his new team, leaving Tony in the lurch which shouldn’t have surprised him in theory. Steve had always been a lone wolf, always wanting to take particular duties into his own hands without consulting Tony. But Tony wasn’t any better, he liked to do things by himself too, they shared many of the same qualities and yet they hated them when they were used against one another.

Staring at the flashing cursor and the dark bolded words that he had just typed, he smacked the ‘enter’ key, knowing that the typical, cliché books about loss and psychology would probably pop up, and of course, they did. But as he scrolled with a dull expression on his face and hopelessness glimmering in his eyes, scrolling endlessly in hope of an answer, a definitive answer, something different caught his attention. Something very different. 


End file.
